You know those times when you think you’ve planned ahead, but actually haven’t?
Like, at say, ten o’clock at night when you finally dig out all the Easter candy and baskets and crap you have to hide because, even if the kids are big enough to know better, you still have to do it- and you discover that you’ve forgotten to buy the bunnies?
Yes. That time. You can put gum sticks in the eggs or give them jars of Nutella, make up the small stuff. But the bunny is kind of an integral piece to the basket. So. The conversation goes something like this.
“Um…it looks like I forgot to buy the Easter bunnies to go in the kid’s baskets…”
(We are already in our pajamas)
“What?!”
“Yeah, I know. Ha! That was stupid! Is Shoppers open?”
“No.”
“London Drugs?”
“Just closed.”
I start to resign myself to the fate of actually having to admit to the kids that I’ve forgotten, and also destroying the mystery for my youngest, who may know, but if I admit to that then I have to admit to all the other things…and this hasn’t worked out well for some of my other friends. Like, our friend’s daughter who opened the ipad only to see the “where to hide your elf on the shelf” page. That had a serious trickle-down effect amongst the fourth graders. I never had one because of the creepy factor. Have you looked at those things? Really looked into their eyes?
Anyway, I hightail it down to the nearest grocery store which is open until eleven; I am not the only one. The last rack of half-priced Easter crap has been ravaged; it looks like there has been a recent frenzy. Last boxes of broken bunnies lay strewn about, their broken candy eyeballs staring off into nowhere. There are random chocolate eggs, peeps (a hard no, unless you want to use them as doorstops) and those Kinder surprise things that are large enough to halve and use as a salad bowl. I scan the detritus as up walks a bleary-eyed dad, obviously there for the same reason. I hedge my bets and grab the last of the bunnies that aren’t broken and one bb8 chocolate Star Wars thing because that’s cooler than the bunny, which, by the way, is the really crappy chocolate one with the rice crispies in it? The one nobody likes? The dad looks under the shelves, checks out the last of the remnants, sighs loudly, and resigns himself to giant Kinder eggs. I smile at him in the line-up to pay, but he does not return a smile back. I have screwed him out of the last two possible basket items and forced him into buying up.
And then I think, wait a minute. What does any of this have to do with Jesus? Did I at one time, know the reason why I actually needed to buy this bunny?
And this Easter morning, as my kids are scrambling around the house gleefully looking for candy, a funny cartoon pops up on my phone, of Jesus rising out of a chocolate Cadbury egg, which makes me feel much better. Because somewhere out there, Jesus probably does have a sense of humor, one large enough to swallow the fact that his resurrection is celebrated by ham, some singing, and the consumption of chocolate bunnies.